Tag You're It! #77

The incredibly lovely Darnell is guest designing over at Tag You're It! for the current challenge and she inspired me to get started on making some Christmas tags.

As you can see I used the embossed white tag and layout to inspire my tag. I stamped one of the reindeer from the Clearly Besotted Let's Prance set and coloured him in with my polychromos pencils then used the matching dies to cut him out. I cut my tag using a small X-cut die and then embossed it using a star stencil. I die cut the sentiment out of a scrap of leftover inked card and added another layer under it to make it stronger as it would overhang the sides. Before I assembled my tag I couldn't resist adding some faux stitches round the edges. Once I'd glued everything in place I added glossy accents to his nose and to the sentiment to finish.

As I die cut the sentiment out of the leftovers of making some ATCs which I'll share with you tomorrow, I'm taking this tag over to The Snippets Playground. I've not managed to play over there for ages so I'm hoping Parsnip has got some mugs to share my flask of mulled wine! Hope you've all had a great weekend and that this week is good for you x

Happy Birthday

Back in August I made a card for my Dad's birthday using the same stamps and dies and Mum asked if I could make a similar card for my Uncle. If I could be bothered, I'd add a link to it, but it's Friday afternoon, I didn't sleep well last night or the night before and so you'll have to go rummaging for it yourself!

I used a Creative Crafting World DL card blank for this which has the fold on the short side. I die cut the Robert Addams Flying Scotsman die out of silver, gold and black card and assembled it as per the very necessary instructions.

Last time I made the card the very lovely Claire of Hamnmule Designs blog thought that the Clearly Besotted sentiment looked like it was made of steam. I thought that was genius and so this time I stamped it above the train in Memento London Fog to emphasise this. I added two lengths of the track that is included in the die set, we'll just ignore the fact that not all the wheels are resting on the rails!

Hope you all have a great weekend, I think mine shall be spent mostly sleeping! 

The Flower Challenge - CAS Reminder

Halfway through the month and so it's time for our reminder post over at The Flower Challenge and this month our theme is clean and simple.

I went super CAS for my reminder card. On a 6x4 card base I stamped one of the stamps from Sheena Douglass Orchid set. The stamp has a little tendril coming off at the top of the stamp and so I added an extra squiggle at the bottom to fill the space and balance the card more. I coloured the stamp in using my polychromos pencils (still getting the hang of these!). To finish off I stamped the sentiment which was from a freebie set with a magazine.

I'm so looking forward to seeing what you make for the challenge, just remember that flowers need to be the focal point of your card. Have a great time creating x

Indigoblu Acrylic Pouring

You may have seen that Kay from Indigoblu is on Hochanda at the moment as their One Day Special with acrylic pouring. We spent the second day of the retreat playing with this and so I thought I'd share my makes with you. The top photo is an 8x8 canvas board, it's really hard to get a good photo of it to show up the silver, but trust me it looks better in real life!

Kay mentioned on the shows that they dry differently and so I thought I'd show you a photo taken just after the pours and one taken when they were dry. Admittedly, some of the pieces my be the wrong way round in the second picture, but I'm sure you can work it out. The top right panel was done on a black gesso painted base and the rest on white. These were all done using the transparent paints and no metallics.

Now, you may have noticed that the bottom right panel looks very different once dry. That's because we put all our trays on shelves to dry out of the way. I was stood talking to someone by the shelves and turned round quickly. The back of my long hair must have flicked out and caught the panel! Fortunately, it was only that one panel which was mine that it caught! Cue Kay and two other ladies with wet wipes trying to wipe acrylic paint off my back and out of my hair. They got most of it out, but I spent 20 minutes that evening pulling the rest out once dry. It looked like I had a bad case of green dandruff on my top by the end.

The final piece I did was on an A5 canvas board and I mixed the paint in my cup with black rather than white gesso, I really wish I could capture the metallic sheen in the photos.

Sweet Stampin' - Babies

Yep, Saturday again and so it's time for our next challenge over at Sweet Stampin' and this week we want to see "Babies".

I made a super quick and simple card this week using the Lili of the valley sentiment stamped in versafine black on a 6x6 card base. I stamped the babies from a Clearly Bessotted set in memento on alcohol pen friendly card and coloured them in with my trusty copics before fussy cutting them out and arranging them on the card. To finish off I drew in a border. Simples! 

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, I'm looking forward to settling on the sofa with hubby to watch Despicable Me 3, but might squeeze in a bit of crafting too.

As ever I can't wait to see what you make with this theme, just remember to include some stamping to be eligible for our top three. Have a great weekend x

What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday

Gosh, I've not joined in with WOYWW for ages, where is the time going? In case you're not familiar with it, we all congregate over at the very lovely Julia's blog to share what we are currently making. It  doesn't matter what type of craft we're doing, but we then get to hop around and see what everyone else is up to and share the love.
I've got to confess that I've not been doing much card making at the moment as I've been enjoying hand sewing again using some Bucilla kits.  I'm currently making an advent calendar and you can see above the top part of the calendar that I'm currently working on.

I made some Halloween themed items recently, I made a Bucilia Halloween decoration set which is currently residing on my twig tree.

I also made a haunted house wall hanging, the black dots on it are where you are supposed to add a sequin and then hang one of the little icons at the bottom of the photo from them. I learnt on the Nordic house hanging that this is a nightmare to do and so am just going to sew them in place instead, I'll probably get around to doing that next October!

The Flower Challenge #14 - CAS

November already and so it's time for our new challenge over at The Flower Challenge and this week we want to see your clean and simple projects. We had a fabulous response to our birthday celebrations so make sure you check if you were a winner.

I used the Rare Earth Sweet Pea stamp set for my card. It's designed to give a watercolour effect and has several layers to stamp. I simply coloured the stamps with my distress markers, spritzed them with water and then stamped them on some watercolour card. There were a couple of empty areas in the flowers and so I scribbled my distress marker on my acrylic block and picked it up with a wet paintbrush to infill the gaps. I stamped the name of the flower in black memento. To finish, I trimmed it down to fit on a 6x4 card blank and added a pink mat. Simples! 

I can't wait to see your CAS entries, just remember to use a floral image as the focus of your card.